Complete Works of Emile Zola (768 page)

She had settled that the formalities should be gone through in her own room. It would lend additional solemnity to them, she thought. Chanteau had been able to walk better since he had begun to take salicylic acid. With the help of the banisters he climbed the stairs behind his wife. Lazare talked about going on to the terrace to smoke a cigar there; but his mother called him back, and insisted upon his presence, which would only be seemly and proper, she said.

The Doctor and Pauline had already gone on before. Matthew, who looked at the procession with wondering eyes, followed in the rear.

‘That dog is quite a nuisance!’ cried Madame Chanteau, as she tried to shut the door. ‘One can’t go anywhere without being followed by him. Well! well! come in, then; I can’t have you scratching outside. There! no one will come and disturb us now. Everything, you see, is quite ready.’

Some pens and an inkstand were all ready laid upon the table. In the room one found all the closeness and mournful silence that clings to places that are rarely occupied. Only Minouche spent her idle hours there, when she could manage to glide inside of a morning; and just now she happened to be lying asleep on the middle of the eider-down quilt. She raised her head, in surprise at the invasion, and stared at the new-comers with her green eyes.

‘Sit down! Sit down!’ said Chanteau.

Then things were quickly settled. Madame Chanteau refrained from all share in the proceedings, leaving her husband to play the part in which she had been carefully coaching him since the day before. In conformity with the requirements of the law, the latter, ten days previously, had delivered to Pauline and the Doctor the accounts of his guardianship in a bulky volume, where the expenses were noted on one page and the receipts on the other. Every­thing was charged for, not only Pauline’s board and lodging, but also the cost of the journeys to Paris and Caen. All that had to be done was to accept the accounts by a private deed. But Cazenove, taking his office of curator somewhat seriously, wanted an explanation about some of the expenses that had been incurred in connection with the sea-weed works, and compelled Chanteau to enter into details. Pauline cast a supplicating glance at the Doctor. What was the use of all this? She herself had assisted in the preparation of the accounts, which her aunt had copied out in her most elegant English — that is, angular — handwriting.

Meantime Minouche had sat up on the eider-down quilt, the better to view these strange proceedings. Matthew, after lying with his huge head stretched out on the carpet with an air of great wisdom, had just thrown himself on his back and was rolling and twisting about with noisy manifestations of joy.

‘Oh, do make him be still, Lazare!’ cried Madame Chanteau, quite impatient of the disturbance. ‘One can’t hear one’s self speak!’

The young man was looking out of the window, following a far-off white sail with his eyes in order to conceal his embarrassment. He experienced a feeling of deep shame as he listened to his father, who was giving a detailed account of the money lost in the works.

‘Make a little less noise, Matthew!’ he cried, reaching out his foot.

The dog thought he was going to have his belly rubbed, a proceeding which he dearly loved, and he grew more demonstrative than ever. Happily, there was now nothing more to be done than to affix the signatures. Pauline, with a stroke of her pen, hastened to signify her approval of every­thing. Then the Doctor, as if regretfully, scrawled a huge flourish over the stamped paper. Painful silence fell.

‘The assets,’ said Madame Chanteau, breaking the silence, ‘amount, then, to seventy-five thousand two hundred and ten francs thirty centimes. I will now hand that sum to Pauline.’

She stepped towards the secrétaire and lowered the lid, which gave out the creak that had so often distressed her. But just now she was very grave, and, when she opened the drawer, they saw the old ledger-binding inside. It was the same as before, with its green-marble pattern stained with grease spots, but it was not nearly so bulky; as the scrip was removed it had grown thinner and thinner.

‘No! no! aunt,’ exclaimed Pauline, ‘keep it!’

Madame Chanteau protested:

‘We are giving in our accounts,’ she said, ‘and we must give up the money as well. It is your property. You remember what I said to you when I put it there eight years ago? We don’t want to take a copper of it for ourselves.’

She drew out the papers and insisted on her niece counting them. There was scrip for seventy-five thousand francs, and a small packet of gold, wrapped up in a piece of newspaper, completed the balance.

‘But where am I to put it all?’ asked Pauline, whose cheeks flushed at the handling of so much money.

‘Lock it up in one of your drawers,’ her aunt replied. ‘You are now big enough to take care of your own money. I don’t want to see it again myself. Stay! if you really find it so troublesome, give it to Minouche, who is looking very attentively at you.’

Now that the Chanteaus had settled their accounts, their cheerfulness returned. Lazare, quite at his ease, began play­ing with the dog, making him try to catch hold of his tail, in such wise that he bent and twisted his spine and spun round and round like a top. Doctor Cazenove, for his part, had already entered upon his duties as trustee, and was promising Pauline to receive her dividends for her and advise her on the question of investments.

And precisely at that moment Véronique was bustling about amongst her pans down below. She had crept upstairs, and, with her ear at the keyhole, had overheard the state­ment of accounts. For several weeks past a slowly growing feeling of pity and affection for Pauline had been driving away her remaining prejudices against the girl.

‘Ton my word, they have swindled her out of half her money!’ she angrily growled. ‘It’s not right! Although she had no business to come and settle herself down here, still that was no reason why they should strip her as bare as a worm. No! no! I know what is right, and I shall end by quite loving the poor child!’

CHAPTER IV

On the following Saturday, when Louise, who had come on a two months’ visit to the Chanteaus, stepped on to the terrace, she found the family there. The hot August day was draw­ing to a close, and a cool breeze rose up from the sea. Abbé Horteur had already made his appearance, and was playing draughts with Chanteau. Madame Chanteau sat near them, embroidering a handkerchief; and, a few yards further away, Pauline stood in front of a
stone seat on which she had placed four children from the village, two little lads and two little girls.

‘What! you have got here already!’ cried Madame Chanteau. ‘I was just folding up my work to go and meet you at the cross-roads.’

Louise gaily explained that old Malivoire had flown along like the wind. She was all right, she said, and did not even want to change her dress; and, while her godmother went off to see about her room, she hung her hat on the hasp of a shutter. She kissed them all round, and then, all smiling and caressing, threw her arms round Pauline’s waist.

‘Now, look at me,’ she said. ‘Good gracious! how we have grown! I’m turned nineteen now, you know, and am getting quite an old maid.’

And after a moment’s silence she added rapidly:

‘By the way, I must congratulate you. Oh! don’t look so shy! I hear it is settled for next month.’

Pauline had returned her caresses with the grave affection of an elder sister, although in reality she was the younger by some eighteen months. A slight blush rose to her cheeks at the reference to her marriage with Lazare.

‘Oh, no! you have been misinformed, really,’ she replied. ‘Nothing is definitely fixed, but it will perhaps be some time in the autumn.’

Madame Chanteau, when pressed on the subject, had indeed spoken of the autumn, in spite of her unwillingness to commit herself to the match, an unwillingness which the two young people were beginning to notice. She was again beginning to harp upon her old excuse for delay, saying that she should much prefer them waiting till Lazare should have acquired some definite position.

‘Ah! I see,’ said Louise, ‘you want to make a secret of it. Well, never mind; but you’ll ask me to come, won’t you? Where’s Lazare? Isn’t he here?’

Chanteau, who had just suffered a defeat at the hands of the priest, here joined in the conversation, saying:

‘Haven’t you seen anything of him, Louise? We were expecting you to get here together. He has gone to Bayeux to make an application to the Sub-Prefect, but he will be back again this evening — almost directly, I should think.’

Then he turned to the draught-board to commence a fresh game.

‘I move first this time, Abbé. We shall manage to get those famous dykes made, I fancy; for the department surely can’t refuse to make us a grant to help on the under­taking.’

He was referring to a new scheme which Lazare had taken up with his usual enthusiasm. During the spring-tides of the previous March the sea had again carried away a couple of houses at Bonneville. Devoured bit by bit on its narrow bed of shingle, the village, it was clear, would be driven to the very cliff unless some substantial protecting works were quickly built. But the little place, with its thirty cottages, was of such slight importance in the world that Chanteau, as Mayor, had for the last ten years been vainly calling the Sub-Prefect’s attention to the perilous position of the villagers. At last Lazare, spurred on by Pauline, whose great wish was to see her cousin actively employed, had conceived a grand idea of a system of piles and breakwaters which would keep back the ravages of the sea. However, money was wanted, and at least twelve thousand francs would be necessary.

‘Ah! I must huff you, my friend,’ said the priest, taking one of Chanteau’s pieces.

Then he launched out into details of old Bonneville.

‘The old folks say that there was once a farm below the church, quite half a mile and more from the present shore. For five hundred years the sea has been gradually eating away the land. It is surely a punishment for the sins of their ancestors.’

Pauline, however, had now returned to the stone seat, where the four young ones were waiting, dirty, ragged, and open-mouthed.

‘Who is it you’ve got there?’ Louise asked her, not daring to venture too near them.

‘Oh! they are some little friends of mine,’ Pauline replied.

The girl’s active charity now spread all over the neighbour­hood. She had an instinctive affection for the wretched, and she was never repelled by their forlorn condition. She even carried this feeling so far as to patch up the broken legs of fowls with splinters of wood, and to set bowls of pap outside at night for homeless cats. Distress of every kind was a source of continual occupation to her, and to alleviate it was her great pleasure. So the poor flocked round her with out­stretched hands, just as pilfering sparrows swarm round the open windows of a corn-loft. All Bonneville, with its handful of fishermen thrown into distress by the sweeping spring-tides, came up to see the ‘young lady,’ as they called her. But it was the children who were her especial favourites, the little things with ragged clothes, through which their pink flesh peeped, poor, frail-looking, half-fed creatures, whose eyes glistened wolfishly at the slices of bread and butter that she brought out for them. The cunning parents took advantage of Pauline’s love for the children, making it a custom to send her the most sickly and ragged that they had, in order that they might increase her commiseration.

‘You see,’ she said, with a smile, ‘I have my day at home, Saturday, just like a fashionable lady, and my friends come to see me. Now, now! little Gonin, just give over pinching that silly Houtelard. I shall be cross with you if you don’t behave better. Now, we will begin in order.’

Then the distribution commenced. She lectured them, and hustled them about in quite a maternal manner. The first she called up to her was young Houtelard, a lad of some ten years, with a sallow complexion and a gloomy timid expres­sion. He began to show her his leg. A big strip of skin had been torn from the knee, and his father had sent him to let the young lady see it, so that she might give him something for it. It was Pauline who supplied arnica and liniments to all the country round. The pleasure she took in healing had resulted in the gradual acquisition of a complete collection of drugs, of which she was very proud. When she had attended to the lad’s knee, she lowered her voice and proceeded to give Louise some particulars about his relations.

‘They are quite well-to-do people, those Houtelards, you know; the only well-to-do fisher-folks in Bonneville. That big smack, you know, belongs to them. But they are fright­fully avaricious, and live real dogs’ lives in the midst of the most horrible filth. The worst of it all is that the father, after beating his wife to death, has married his servant, a dreadful woman, who is even harsher than himself, and between them they are gradually murdering the poor child.’

Then, without taking notice of her friend’s repugnance, she raised her voice again, and called another of the children.

‘Now, little one, you come here; have you drunk your bottle of quinine-wine?’

This child was the little daughter of Prouane, the verger. She looked like an infant Saint Theresa, marked all over with scrofula, flushed and frightfully thin, with big eyes, in which hysteria was already gleaming. She was eleven years old, but seemed to be scarcely seven.

‘Yes, Mademoiselle,’ she stammered; ‘I have drunk it all.’

‘You little story-teller!’ cried the priest, without taking his eyes from the draught-board. ‘Your father smelt strongly of wine last night.’

Pauline looked extremely annoyed. The Prouanes had no boat, but made their living by catching crabs and shrimps and gathering mussels. With the additional profits of the vergership they might have lived in decent comfort if it had not been for their drinking habite. The father and mother were often to be seen lying in their doorway stupefied by ‘calvados,’ the strong, raw, cyder-brandy of Normandy, while the little girl stepped over their legs to drain their glasses. When no ‘calvados’ was to be had, Prouane drank his daughter’s quinine-wine.